A wide variety of means exist for communication between users. For example, a user may conduct phone calls via a home phone, work phone, and mobile phone. In addition, users may also communicate using devices such as PC's, PDA's, pagers, etc. using, for example, email and instant messaging.
Unfortunately, managing such a wide variety of communication means can be difficult. In particular, as a user changes location, communication with the user may vary. For example, while on travel, it may only be possible to reach a user by mobile phone. However, the user may best be reached by email while at work. Also, the user may wish to implement various rules for receiving and controlling communications. For example, to be reached at home, the user may want the home phone to ring three times before forwarding the call to a mobile phone. As another example, the user may wish to be paged each time an email is received from a particular person while away from the office.
Typically, to implement communication management, a person must individually manage each communication device separately. Thus, when the user wishes to change how communication is managed, the user may have to deal with numerous devices and, perhaps, service centers.
Further, call management is becoming increasingly difficult given the variety of communication devices and services. Especially with outgoing calls, conventional communication system provide users with limited features. One feature often provided by conventional systems is “redial,” which enables a user to initiate a call to a previously dialed number without re-inputting that number. Certain systems (e.g., digital cell phones) allow users to locally store phone numbers in a contact list, which is usually a FIFO or rolling list with limited storage capacity. In such systems, the user typically must perform an action to insert phone numbers in the contact list. For example, in a cell phone, the user must enter in phone numbers via a keypad and instruct the device to save the entered numbers. Certain systems may automatically store all outgoing and incoming calls in a rolling list as they are dialed and received; however, such systems typically provide limited FIFO storage and usually store only the numbers. Current communication systems do not provide users with filtering and exclusion options for outgoing call storage, and these systems do not allow users to obtain caller information from the dialed numbers. Moreover, conventional systems do not facilitate coordination and management of outgoing calls originating from several devices (e.g., cell phones, laptops, PDAs, J2ME phones, BREW phones, etc.).
Methods, systems, and articles of manufacture consistent with certain embodiments of the present invention are directed to obviating one or more of the issues set forth above.